JOSEPH SMITH, JR.
Founder and first "Prophet, Seer, and Revelator" (1805-1844)
of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons)

Joseph Smith, Jr. was born in Sharon, Windsor County, Vermont, on
December 23, 1805. Joseph was the third son and one of ten children
born to Joseph Smith Jr.Joseph and Lucy Mack Smith. Both parents were
poorly educated, very superstitious, and deeply involved in the occult
(magic). The destitute Smith family moved frequently, with the mystical
Joseph Sr. etching out a meager existence by farming, digging for
buried treasure, and "water witching." When all else failed, he even
attempted to mint his own money (a practice that was disliked by the
local constabulary).

The Smith family had a reputation for low moral character. According to
more than sixty affidavits signed by members of the community, "...we
have no hesitation in saying, that we consider them destitute of moral
character, which ought to entitle them to the confidence of the
community. They were particularly famous for visionary projects, spent
much of their time in digging for money which they pretended was hid in
the earth;...Joseph Smith, Senior, and his son Joseph, were in
particular, considered entirely destitute of moral character, and
addicted to vicious habits." 1

Joseph, Jr. learned well from the poor examples shown by his parents.
According to one acquaintance, "...his habits of exaggeration and
untruthfulness...and by reason of the extravagances of his statement,
his word was received with the least confidence by those who knew him
best. He would utter the most palpable exaggeration or marvelous
absurdity with the utmost apparent gravity." 2

At the age of 14, Joseph Smith, Jr. claimed to have been visited by God
the Father and Jesus, both in the flesh. He was told by them that ALL
present-day churches were wrong, that ALL the clergy were corrupt, and
that ALL creeds were an abomination in God's eyes! In a later vision
with the Angel Moroni, Joseph was given directions to a stash of buried
golden plates in the Hill Cumorah and told that they contained
"reformed Egyptian" characters from which he would translate into the
"restored gospel," later known as the Book of Mormon.

From that translation (with the infamous peep-stone), the Book of
Mormon was published in 1830. Shortly thereafter, the Book of
Commandments (which later became the Doctrine and Covenants), and the
Pearl of Great Price (a mistranslation of the Egyptian Book of the Dead
papyri) came into being.

Joseph Smith, Jr. introduced into the church (and a very naïve world)
many concepts of the Godhead, salvation, and man's destiny that are
considered heretical in Christianity. In Mormonism, God is just a man
and man is just a God. Jesus is the spirit brother of the devil.
Plurality of wives is a requirement for entrance into heaven (which
Joseph described as "everlasting burnings"). However, if you don't make
it there, according to Smith, "Hell is by no means the place this world
of fools suppose it to be, but on the contrary, it is quite an
agreeable place ." 3

Joseph, Jr. was once called the "greatest egotist and boaster." He was
obsessed with power, fame, and as many wives as he could gather. He was
proud of his physical strength and would regularly show-off. He was
known for his short temper and physical violence when aggravated.

In 1838, a very prideful Joseph Smith appointed himself Lieutenant
General of the Nauvoo Legion. Lyman L. Woods recalls, "I have seen him
on a white horse wearing the uniform of a general. He was leading a
parade of the Legion and looked like a god." 4 Later, Joseph had
himself ordained "King on earth!" Toward the end of his life, Joseph
had himself nominated for President of the United States. 5

Joseph's power over his minions was great. Brigham Young once
proclaimed, "...no man or woman in this dispensation will ever enter
into the celestial kingdom without the consent of Joseph Smith. Every
man and woman must have the certificate of Joseph Smith, Junior, as a
passport to their entrance into the mansion where God and Christ
are...I cannot go there without his consent. He reigns there as supreme
a being in his sphere, capacity, and calling, as God does in heaven." 6

Humility and meekness never played a very important part in Joseph's
life. Prior to being killed in a gunfight at the Carthage, Illinois,
jail in 1844, Joseph had left us with these profound statements:

"God made Aaron to be the mouthpiece for the children of Israel, and He
will make me be god to you in His stead, and the Elders to be mouth for
me; and if you don't like it, you must lump it." 7

"I am a lawyer; I am a big lawyer and comprehend heaven, earth and
hell, to bring forth knowledge that shall cover up all lawyers, doctors
and other big bodies." 8

"Don't employ lawyers, or pay them money for their knowledge, for I
have learned that they don't know anything. I know more than they all."
9

"I combat the errors of ages; I meet the violence of mobs; I cope with
illegal proceedings from executive authority; I cut the gordian knot of
powers, and I solve mathematical problems of universities, with
truth-diamond truth; and God is my 'right hand man'." 10

"If they want a beardless boy to whip all the world, I will get on the
top of a mountain and crow like a rooster: I shall always beat
them....I have more to boast of than ever any man had. I am the only
man that has ever been able to keep a whole church together since the
days of Adam. A large majority of the whole have stood by me. Neither
Paul, John, Peter, nor Jesus ever did it. I boast that no man ever did
such a work as I. The followers of Jesus ran away from Him; but the
Latter-day Saints never ran away from me yet." 11

But my favorite Joseph Smith quote has still got to be, "No man can
learn you more than what I have told you." 12

[Copyright 2001 by Sword of the Spirit Apologetics. This data file is
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Mormonism is a cult of personality centered around Joseph Smith Jr.

From the Changing World of Mormonism Chapter 17

The importance of Joseph Smith in Mormon theology
cannot be overemphasized. Brigham Young, the church's second president,
boasted:

Well, now, examine the character of the Savior, and
examine the characters of those who have written the Old and New
Testament; and then compare them with the character of Joseph Smith,
the founder of this work ... and you will find that his character
stands as fair as that of any man's mentioned in the Bible. We can find
no person who presents a better character to the world when the facts
are known than Joseph Smith, Jun., the prophet, and his brother, Hyrum
Smith, who was murdered with him (Journal of Discourses, vol. 14,
p.203).

... no man or woman in this dispensation will ever
enter into the celestial kingdom of God without the consent of Joseph
Smith.... Every man and woman must have the certificate of Joseph
Smith, junior, as a passport to their entrance into the mansion where
God and Christ are ... I cannot go there without his consent.... He
reigns there as supreme a being in his sphere, capacity, and calling,
as God does in heaven (vol. 7, p.289).

... I am an Apostle of Joseph Smith.... all who
reject my testimony will go to hell, so sure as there is one, no matter
whether it be hot or cold ... (vol. 3, p.212).

I will now give my scripture—"Whosoever confesseth
that Joseph Smith was sent of God ... that spirit is of God; and every
spirit that does not confess that God has sent Joseph Smith, and
revealed the everlasting Gospel to and through him, is of Anti-christ
... (vol. 8, p.176).

Heber C. Kimball, a member of the first Presidency
under Brigham Young, said that the time would come when people would
"prize brother Joseph Smith as the Prophet of the Living God, and look
upon him as a God, and also upon Brigham Young, our Governor in the
Territory of Deseret" (Journal of Discourses, vol. 5, p.88).

JOSEPH SMITH AND THE OCCULT

Mormon scholar D. Michael Quinn, has carefully documented that
Smith was influenced by the culture of his day and particularly by his
immediate family. His father and uncle both used divining rods.1 Luman
Walters was likely the individual who introduced Joseph Smith, Jr. to
using the "seer stone" for the pretense of discovering treasure.2The
Palmyra Reflector dubbed him as "Walters the Magician" who operated by
the use of "familiar spirits," using instruments of witchcraft such as
a "stuffed toad," "an old sword," and a "seer stone."3

Dr. Reed Durham, former president of the Mormon History Association,
and Professor of Religion at the University of Utah, in a 1974 lecture
revealed that at the time of his death Joseph Smith was wearing what
was formerly thought to have been a "Masonic jewel" was actually a
"Jupiter talisman." This proves that Joseph Smith was engaged in occult
practices until the end of his life in 1844.4A talisman is an object
engraved with astrological signs believed to have possessed power to
avert evil and bring good luck. Such pieces are clearly identified with
occult magic. This lecture, although true, brought the wrath of then
President Spencer W. Kimbell down upon Dr. Durham. The talisman is
currently kept in the LDS Archives.

HERE'S A PICTURE OF THE JUPITER TALISMAN FROM THE MAGUS by FRANCIS
BARRETT IDENTICAL TO THE ONE USED BY SMITH.Smith's Jupiter talisman

Is it wrong to use a Jupiter Talisman?

Yes, no Christian, let alone a prophet, would do this. Jupiter is a
false god. The Bible is very specific that those who follow God
cannot use magic or follow other gods.

IN 1973 RLDS HISTORIAN PAUL M. EDWARDS identified a fundamental
deficiency of Mormon historical studies: "We have not allowed," says
Edwards speaking of Mormon historians, "the revolutionary nature of the
movement from which we have sprung to make us revolutionaries." He
continued:

The one thing about which we
might all agree concerning Joseph Smith is that he was not the usual
sort of person. He did not approach life itself--or his religious
commitment--in a usual way. Yet the character of our historical
investigation of Joseph Smith and his times has been primarily
traditional, unimaginative, and lacking in any effort to find or create
an epistemological methodology revolutionary enough to deal with the
paradox of our movement. The irony of our position is that many of our
methods and interpretations have become so traditional that they can
only reinforce the fears of yesterday rather than nurture the seeds of
tomorrow's dreams.1

More than two decades have passed since those words were penned, years
marked by a veritable explosion in Mormon studies, and yet Edward's
challenge "to find or create an epistemological methodology
revolutionary enough to deal with the paradox" of Joseph Smith remains
a summons largely unanswered. Revolutions are painful processes, in
measure both destructive and creative. The imaginative revisioning of
Joseph Smith's "unusual approach" to life and religion, demands a
careful--though perhaps still difficult and destructive--hewing away of
an hundred years of encrusting vilifications and thick layerings of
iconographic pigments, masks ultimately false to his lively cast. Smith
eschewed orthodoxy, and so eventually must his historians. To that end,
there is considerable value in turning full attention to the
revolutionary view of Joseph Smith provided by Harold Bloom in his
critique of The American Religion.

Broadly informed as a critic of the creative imagination and its
Kabbalistic, Gnostic undertones in Western culture--and perhaps one of
the most prominent literary figures in America--Bloom has intuitively
recognized within Joseph Smith a familiar spirit, a genius wed in
nature to both the millennia-old visions of Gnosticism in its many
guises, and the imaginative flux of poesy. Individuals less informed in
the history and nature of Kabbalism--or of Hermetic, Alchemical and
Rosicrucian mysticism, traditions influenced by a creative interaction
with Kabbalah--may have difficulty apprehending the basis of his
insight. Indisputably, the aegis of "orthodox" Mormon historiography is
violently breached by Bloom's intuition linking the prophet's visionary
bent with the occult aspirations of Jewish Kabbalah, the great mystical
and prophetic tradition of Israel.

Bloom is, of course, not a historian but a critic and interpreter of
creative visions, and his reading of Smith depends perhaps less on
historical detail than on his intuition for the poetic imagination. The
affinity of Smith for these traditions is, nonetheless, evident to an
educated eye.

What is clear is that Smith and his apostles restated what Moshe Idel,
our great living scholar of Kabbalah, persuades me was the archaic or
original Jewish religion. . . . My observation certainly does find
enormous validity in Smith's imaginative recapture of crucial elements,
elements evaded by normative Judaism and by the Church after it. The
God of Joseph Smith is a daring revival of the God of some of the
Kabbalists and Gnostics, prophetic sages who, like Smith himself,
asserted that they had returned to the true religion. . . . Either
there was a more direct Kabbalistic influence upon Smith than we know,
or, far more likely, his genius reinvented Kabbalah in the effort
necessary to restore archaic Judaism.2

While I would not diminish the inventive genius of Joseph Smith,
careful reevaluation of historical data suggests there is both a poetic
and an unsuspected factual substance to Bloom's thesis. Though yet
little understood, from Joseph's adolescent years forward he had
repeated, sometime intimate and arguably influential associations with
distant legacies of Gnosticism conveyed by Kabbalah and
Hermeticism--traditions intertwined in the Renaissance and nurtured
through the reformative religious aspirations of three subsequent
centuries. Though any sympathy Joseph held for old heresy was perhaps
intrinsic to his nature rather than bred by association, the
associations did exist. And they hold a rich context of meanings. Of
course, the relative import of these interactions in Joseph Smith's
history will remain problematic for historians; efforts to revision the
Prophet in their light--or to reevaluate our methodology of
understanding his history--may evoke a violently response from
traditionalists. Nonetheless, these is substantial documentary
evidence, material unexplored by Bloom or Mormon historians generally,
supporting a much more direct Kabbalistic and Hermetic influences upon
Smith and his doctrine of God than has previously been considered
possible.

Through his associations with ceremonial magic as a young treasure
seer, Smith contacted symbols and lore taken directly from Kabbalah. In
his prophetic translation of sacred writ, his hermeneutic method was in
nature Kabbalistic. With his initiation into Masonry, he entered a
tradition born of the Hermetic-Kabbalistic tradition. These
associations culminated in Nauvoo, the period of his most important
doctrinal and ritual innovations. During these last years, he enjoyed
friendship with a European Jew well-versed in the standard Kabbalistic
works and possibly possessing in Nauvoo an extraordinary collection of
Kabbalistic books and manuscripts. By 1844 Smith not only was cognizant
of Kabbalah, but enlisted theosophic concepts taken directly from its
principal text in his most important doctrinal sermon, the "King
Follett Discourse."

Smith's concepts of God's plurality, his vision of God as anthropos,
and his possession by the issue of sacred marriage, all might have been
cross-fertilized by this intercourse with Kabbalistic theosophy--an
occult relationship climaxing in Nauvoo. This is a complex thesis; its
understanding requires exploration of an occult religious tradition
spanning more that a millennium of Western history, an investigation
that begins naturally with Kabbalah.

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